iRobot Roomba 870 Review

I don’t have a lot of experience with robots, but I can tell you that Alice, my new iRobot Roomba 870, is my favorite.

Before Alice, I used a complicated system to sweep our hardwood floors. I pushed around a wide dry mop, then cleaned the mop off with a handheld vacuum. It involved a lot tedious work and awkward bending over. In the carpeted basement, I used a traditional vacuum - again, a lot of work.

Alice makes the whole process so much easier. Now when I want to clean our hardwood or carpet floors, I just turn her on and get out of her way. Like magic, I return to find the entire floor clean. It’s amazing! I wish I had gotten a Roomba sooner. I got a discount on Alice as through BzzAgent, and wrote a review there as well.

We named our iRobot Roomba 870 Alice, after Alice the maid from The Brady Bunch. My 2-year-old daughter was a bit scared of Alice at first, but she has gotten used to her. Now she chases her around the room saying “where’s Alice going?” The thing is, you can’t tell where she is going to go next, but somehow, Alice gets the entire floor clean. It gets around all your furniture, but we move the smaller stuff out of the way if we can, for a more thorough job. The Roomba is only about 4 inches tall, so it also fits under the couch - somewhere I NEVER bother cleaning myself!

The iRobot Roomba 870 comes with two virtual walls, which prevent the robot from going where you don’t want her (or him) to go. Those worked very well for us, though the Roomba turned around a few inches sooner than I expected when using them.

The “cliff-detection” system, which prevents the Roomba from falling down stairs, did not really work for us. Alice comes to top of our stairs, stops, and says “error, please reposition Roomba and start again.” But that’s ok, because I just use the virtual walls at the top of the stairs.

The bin of the Roomba does get full more quickly than regular vacuums, but that doesn’t bother me. Obviously, the entire thing is much smaller than a regular vacuum. I have Alice clean our entire carpeted basement, which is about 700 square feet, and I only have to empty the bin once in the middle.

As I said, I wish I had gotten a Roomba a lot sooner - it has saved me lots of time and effort. I will not be vacuuming our floors anymore. I love Alice the Roomba, and I would recommend the iRobot Roomba 870 to anyone.

Fisher-Price City Ckyway: Great toy for learning and keeping little hands busy

I received a Fisher-Price City Skyway for free as a product trial thanks to Fisher-Price and BzzAgent. My daughter turned 2 right around the time we received it, so we decided to give it to her as a birthday gift. She loves it. One of her favorite things to do is fill the cars up with gas. She seems to understand that they need a fill-up before going down the ramp - very cute.

At first, my daughter was frustrated that she couldn’t predict or choose which path the car would take on the way down (she’d say “I want THIS one!”), but now she likes that it’s different every time. She is learning her colors, and I love that each ramp is a different color, so we can say “it came out the orange one!” etc. Another thing my daughter enjoys is the gate at the bottom. She loves to sit on one side, and push the cars through to me on the other side.

The City Skyway comes with two cars and I believe you can purchase more. My daughter enjoys putting anything she can fit down the ramps, and I know she is learning by doing that - things with wheels go, things without them don’t. I do wish that some of her other car and truck toys fit down the ramps.

The “realistic crane” doesn’t do much, but we use it to store one of the cars when she isn’t playing with it. There is another shelf/parking space to store the other car. But if you’re planning to purchase more than the two cars the City Skyway comes with, there won’t be anywhere on the toy to store them.

One thing I found strange is that the pretend sidewalk at the base of the Skyway has litter on it! There’s an apple core, pieces of mail, a spilled ice cream cone, and even a broken camera. I suppose that is realistic, but I found it odd. There are other cute things, like a sidewalk chalk drawing and dog footprints. All of this is just on the plastic sidewalk base - so the attention to detail is something, even if some of the detail is garbage.

Putting it together: My husband and father-in-law put the Skyway together. It took about 30 minutes. It wasn’t as easy as we thought it would be, but they enjoyed it. There are 44 steps on the instructions, with pictures. My advice: DO NOT put the pieces together without reading the directions. My husband decided to just start snapping together pieces that had the same numbers on them, not realizing they had to sort of wrap around the base structure before being snapped. So don’t do that (or don’t let your husband do it!).

Also, once the Skyway goes together, it doesn’t come apart easily. This means that it does take up quite a bit of room. Yes, the actual floor foot print is only 13” x 18” but the roads stick out about 6” on either side of that, and, as I’m sure you know, this thing is more than 3 feet tall. Just something to keep in mind if you’re tight on space.

That said, my daughter is just the right height for this right now, and we look forward to playing with it for quite awhile. Here is a picture of her enjoying her birthday present!

I also posted this review on Amazon. You can buy the Fisher-Price City Skyway here.

All Black & Blue - In a Good Way

One of my favorite burgers to eat out at restaurants is a "black & blue" burger. Other toppings vary, but it always includes blue cheese. Blue cheese adds a great punch of flavor to a great burger.

Despite enjoying a black & blue once in awhile at restaurants, I have never attempted to put blue cheese on a burger at home. I sometimes purchase blue cheese crumbles to put on salads, but putting them on a burger has never even occurred to me, because I know it'd be messy and difficult.

Until now. Castello® Burger Blue cheese, which I was able to try for free as a BzzAgent, is a great sliced blue cheese that is ready to put right on your burgers at your backyard grill. It comes in convenient slices, with papers in between that make it easy to apply to the burgers.

My husband is the one who does the grilling in our family. We decided to try black & blue burgers tonight. Since we were low on time, he grilled pre-formed burgers from our grocery store. He put the Burger Blue slices on just before the burgers were medium-well done. The slices were definitely easier to put on the burgers than crumbles would have been, but the slices themselves were still a bit crumbly, so coverage wasn't as perfect as it would be on a restaurant black & blue burger.

However, this cheese tastes GREAT! We enjoyed some pretty fantastic black & blue burgers for dinner tonight. I may not wait until we have burgers again - this cheese is good enough to eat on its own.

The Castello® Burger Blue cheese was hard to find for awhile, but I believe it is now available at most local grocery chains. I will definitely try it again soon.

Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Makeup

I recently received a free sample of Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Makeup from BzzAgent.

Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Makeup works very well for me. I am one of those people who wears foundation every day. I typically use drugstore brands. But I have also tried a few department store makeup counter foundations. I find Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Makeup to be more like the department store brands, even though it has the same price and availability as drugstore brands.

This foundation goes on smoothly and blends well. I have light skin, so I'm using the lightest shade. It works well for my skin. The pictures shows a before and after of my face. On the left, I'm not wearing any makeup at all - you can see there are some red splotches and spots. On the right, I'm wearing just the Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Makeup - no other powder, concealer, or anything. There's a big difference in covering the spots, etc.! And it's well-blended too!

Despite providing good coverage all day, this foundation feels comfortable on my skin. It does not feel cakey or greasy after a few hours. It is lightweight and natural feeling.

The product goes on easily, but I do have one suggestion. I read from the BzzAgent campaign site that you should shake up the foundation before each use. I have found this to be true, but I don't see that instruction anywhere on the bottle. I wouldn't have known to do that if it weren't for BzzAgent. Maybe it should say it somewhere on the bottle.

I recommend Neutrogena Nourishing Long Wear Makeup. Give it a try!

Keebler® Simply Made Cookies

I recently received a sample of Keebler® Simply Made cookies in two different flavors: Butter and Chocolate Chip. I was lucky enough to try them because I am a BzzAgent.

Keebler® Simply Made Butter cookies are very tasty. I have a young toddler who is just starting to eat cookies like this on her own. These butter cookies were easy for her to eat, and she enjoyed the taste. "More cookie" is now one of her favorite phrases!

My husband and I enjoyed eating the Simply Made Butter cookies as well. They are not quite as good as homemade butter cookies, but pretty close! They really have a good, buttery taste, and the texture is not grainy like some packaged cookies can be. I enjoyed them with my afternoon coffee.

Keebler® Simply Made Chocolate Chip cookies are also good. The flavor is tasty and buttery, and there is just the right amount of chocolate chips. I preferred the Butter flavor, but the Chocolate Chip ones did not go to waste! They are not soft and chewy, so if you prefer a crumbly cookie with lots of chocolate chips, these are for you! Come to think of it, the ingredients that are added to packaged cookies to make them soft and chewy are probably not natural ingredients you would have in your pantry. So it makes sense that these Keebler® Simply Made Chocolate Chip cookies are on the drier side. I love that they are made with more wholesome ingredients.

I love baking cookies, but with a young child at home, it's certainly more convenient to open a package than to bake from scratch. Since Keebler® Simply Made cookies are made with the same ingredients I'd use at home, I feel much better about serving them to my family. I recommend trying Keebler® Simply Made cookies next time you find yourself in the cookie aisle!